Suggestion: A not in the spirit of Mumsnet report function

[Bloodyscarymary]

I have noticed that there are a number of deeply unpleasant posters across a lot of threads, people with no interest in supporting an OP with advice or even very strongly held opinions of their own, but rather focused on being goady, insulting and aggressive.

These posters don’t veer into the realm of personal attack but they do shut discussion down and I imagine make OPs who have to experience them less willing to post in the future.

Does there exist a way to report these posters?

And if not, might I suggest a “posts not in the spirit of Mumsnet” report function. One report wouldn’t be enough for mumsnet to take action but perhaps if a user gets say, 20 such reports, then they get a time out from using their account?

Perhaps Mumsnet feels that that these posters keep engagement up because they cause arguments but I think the beauty of the site is cheerful, principled or even heated disagreement and debate whereas these poisonous posters aren’t trying to make a case, they’re just nitpicking and bitter and serve to derail threads or simply silence the OP so other users don’t get anymore updates.

Reddit has the upvote and downvote function where posters like this would just get downvoted until their posts were hidden from view. I think mumsnet needs a way to deal with them too.

Maybe more people need to be aware that this is something they can report as I incorrectly thought reports had to be reserved for breaches like hate speech / personal attack and not just “this person is really rude and just seems to be having a go at the OP for no reason”.

I believe you that they have always existed but I will say that sometimes I stumble on a thread from 2011 or something and it’s startling how different the tone is, everyone mostly kind and chatty. So I would argue it’s much worse now.

Whilst there are a few Angela Rayner threads at the moment I reported the one that was about her being a national embarrassment because she had a baby at 16. I think as a politican she’s fair game for criticism about decisions she makes as an adult but found it very distasteful and misogynistic to create a thread to slag off young women. It was taken down very quickly I must say (and assume lots of others reported too). That was more ‘not in the spirit’ rather than breaching any specific rules.

I will say that I feel that MN is infected with bad actors at the moment deliberately starting threads which are designed to be goady and divisive. It’s not great.

“this person is really rude and just seems to be having a go at the OP for no reason”

Generally though, commenters police themselves by calling each other out when this happens. I've never seen a thread where this kind of thing goes unchallenged.

What I think is more of a problem is when people engage with goady posters. I notice it a lot on FWR, for example. Just ignore them.

It’s frustrating when an OP only responds to those people, but to be honest that’s on them, they’re derailing their own thread.

So I would say “no” to this. It’s too vague and subjective.

(I would however ban those who come onto threads to say nothing more than “eh?” or “I don’t see the problem”. They can fuck off to the far side of fuck.)

I use the 'other' tick box on the report function then ask MNHQ to take a look at the poster.

Generally though, commenters police themselves by calling each other out when this happens. I've never seen a thread where this kind of thing goes unchallenged.

Yes, I very much agree with this. We can and do challenge people on the thread itself if they are needlessly rude.

Often, though , this is done in angry, oppositional terms so that the thread gets more horribly, not less.

The best responses are those that are pretty gentle, emphasising the OP's need for support rather than the rude person's unpleasantness.

We need to model kindness. Personally, I need to monitor myself and try to model kindness better. I know that I am more snippy on MN than I used to be. I blame the years I spent on Twitter, and the general polemical state of so much online discourse now. I come to MN already primed with anger and it is easy to fire off something a bit thoughtless, just to get that little dopamine hit of (allegedly) being 'more right' than the other person. I have definitely been guilty of that.

If we all vow to think twice about our own posting, that would do much more for MN's tone than any additional report options.

I’m sure part of the problem is that many posters have never actually read the talk guidelines
https://www.mumsnet.com/i/netiquette
including a link to specific info on ‘trolls and troublemakers’.

The deliberately goady posters really fall into that category, I think, and I can’t see MNHQ implementing any change which would effectively be public trollhunting rather than everyone just reporting their concerns and letting the mods do their job of moderation.

Another factor is newer users thinking MNHQ works, or should work, like other platforms - tbh I’m not sure I know of any which don’t have at least as big or worse issues.

Yes I agree but then I feel like getting challenged is like catnip to these posters, they thrive off attention so it doesn’t actually help apart from to make OP feel a bit supported which is nice.

Then everyone should just ignore them.

I think they need to crack down on the people who deliberately misinterpret your post to try and win whatever argument they believe they're in with you.

Eg

"I think white cars are ugly"

"OH SO YOU THINK PEOPLE WHO HAVE WHITE CARS ARE NAZIS DO YOU; YOU WANT THEM RAPED AND MURDERED?".

that type of thing.

That is a horrid post and well done for reporting, I’m glad it was taken down. MN is generally very good at removing entire posts if reported.

I often report ones that are just MN ragebait that make us all look silly when we take the bait, there was one yesterday that was clearly fake about someone saying their sister was always 15 minutes late and would they be unreasonable to stop seeing them. Quite clearly designed to get people frothing about how lateness is disrespectful and the other side arguing that sometimes it’s ADHD etc etc - you can just imagine the OP as some teenage boy having a laugh at winding up grown (mostly) women.

Anyway it’s lovely that THIS thread has just been people saying their opinion in a respectful way! Maybe I’ll do all my posts on site stuff from now on 😉

That’s nice self reflection there @RandomlyGeneratedTriad and could apply to us all! Maybe there just needs to be an automatic message on common culprits topics like AIBU when a post starts trending and attracting the worst types: “Reminder from MNHQ that OP is a real person like you so please be respectful even when you disagree”.

yes that’s exactly the type of poster I’m talking about!

It's such a low intelligence method of communication. I see it as a red flag for.abuse. they'll be doing that to their partners and children too..

Like right now, because some people.disgree with me in a thread, they making comments like my "mask has slipped", I think one insinuated that I am a man, and just general shitty comments about ME just because I hold a certain view in a general debate. This is vile behaviour. Why do they allow it? It is so bitchy and catty and brings down the whole tone of the site.

I dont think it'd work.

Your goady fucker might be my blunt truth teller.

I think it seems to be acceptable on here that if someone holds a view that the majority of the thread feel is inaccurate, it is fair game to be really fucking horrible to that person and make personal comments about them. To insult them, basically. As a female dominated space, it shows us to be petty and reactive rather than measured and analytical.

I think we have to have higher standards in terms of what is acceptable behaviour when you disagree with someone. Just because someone says something that you disagree with, it shouldn't bring you pleasure to see them get taken down and ripped to shreds for holding that view. If you enjoy that kind of goady behaviour when someone differs from you, then there is a fault with your character

The problem with this is that venom is allowed if it goes with the zeitgeist. Mumsnet is one of the very few places on line where posts that go against groupthink or the current acceptable views are permitted. I value freedom of thought, speech and expression very highly and to me the spirit of Mumsnet would be lost if it went down the rabbit hole of authoritarian censorship that is becoming increasingly a problem in society at the moment.

I'd like to see "the spirit of Mumsnet" defined first, as it's changed so much over the years.

And personally I think it allows for too much subjectivity on the part of the moderator. JMO.

@Owly11 I completely share your sentiments regarding free speech and censorship but I do think there is a difference between that and wanting posters filled with venom to be discouraged. Often they’re not even taking a particular stance, just latching onto something random in the OP and being obsessive about it, or projecting a whole lot of nonsense onto the OP that they’ve simply imagined. I think we can do a better job of reducing this sort of behaviour than we currently are (because it is rife!).

And whilst subjectivity is a risk, I think the majority of us can understand extreme rudeness when we see it. Additionally, no one should get their account suspended for just one person thinking they are rude/inflammatory or for a momentary slip in an otherwise genuine posting history - it would need to take a body of reports from different people across a few threads for MN to review, and then the moderator would have final say.

I just don’t think enough people are aware that you can report someone for being really unkind / rude so either we call them out in the post (fuel the fire) or they just get away with it. Every thread that is derailed like this is an OP who probably won’t bother to seek advice from mn again as it’s just not worth the vitriol they receive.

Or maybe MN just likes it this way as any engagement, even toxic engagement, is good for their metrics.

the point there is that the post would get better responses in the correct topic. So there, it would be better if someone reported the OP and asked MN to move it.

And as with other thing that get raised with MN - they say "tackle it in the thread" so, that's what we need to do, robustly tackle it.

Having said that: sometimes what the OP really needs is a dose of reality/kick up the backside.

Well, everyone has a different standard of what is acceptable behavior.

I think its too subjective to meaningfully police.

did you report these posts? If not, it’s not that MNHQ are ‘allowing’ it, it’s that they don’t know about them. The mn moderation system relies on reports. I think people don’t always realise, they’re not being a nuisance when they report, they’re performing a vital step of the moderation process.